Last Survivor: Living in a Town called Dachau - Softcover

Ryback, Timothy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0330390023 ISBN 13: 9780330390026

Publisher: Picador, 2001

Synopsis

Timothy Ryback meets the people of Dachau and discovers how the older generation deals with a past they knew first hand, and how the younger generations live life under its shadow. There are the mothers who drive to Munich to give birth so their children do not have Dachau written on their birth certificates. There is the constantly apologetic mayor who goes to Israel to say sorry for Dachau's sins - when the majority of Dachau's living inhabitants were either not born or only children when the camp existed. There is the storm over McDonald's setting up a restaurant in the town and advertising `Only two miles from the camp!' There is the strangest anomaly of them all - that the town of Dachau is not even the nearest town to the camp in which thousands of Jews died. Alongside these stories is the story of Martin Zaidenstadt, a self-styled camp guide whose past is difficult to reveal and at times believe. `Ryback's literate, gently rambling style provides an ideal medium for his journalistic persistence in getting to the heart of his story - a heart that bleeds' Independent on Sunday

About this title

About the Author:

Timothy W. Ryback is director of the Salzburg Seminar, as well as a frequent contributor to The New Yorker and the New York Times Magazine. He was previously a lecturer in the Concentration of History and Literature at Harvard University. He lives with his family in Salzburg, Austria.

Synopsis:

An investigation into what it is like to live in Dachau now. Ryback meets the people of Dachau and discovers how they live under the camp's shadow. He also tells the story of Martin Zaidenstadt, a camp guide whose past is difficult to reveal and, at times, to believe.

About this edition

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0330390023
• ISBN 13: 9780330390026
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208